Wes Franklin squinted into the low light of the lounge and stepped inside once he could make out things in the near-dark. There were only a few people there despite the earliness of the evening. There was a couple in the back, a pair of barflys near the door and one woman drinking alone at the very end of the bar. He walked over to sit two stools away from the solitary woman. Wes ordered a double scotch from the bartender and casually asked the woman if she wanted anything. Since she was obviously in her cups, she asked for a bourbon neat and offered her thanks. Wes waved it off and took a big swig of his scotch. He had the evening free and having a few drinks might do him some good.

When the bartender put the bourbon in front of the woman, she muttered her thanks and slugged it down like it was water. Wes thought to himself that the woman was headed for trouble if she kept drinking like that so he told her so. She smiled a slightly drunken smile and began to tell Wes a story about a child she used to have. As she got into her story, she told him that one night her child heard something outside and insisted on going outside on their balcony. The child was only five but she was very insistent about going out there. When she got out onto the balcony, she held her arms up in the air and shouted “Look, Mommy”! She then turned into a pillar of light and disappeared. The woman had witnessed the disappearance of her daughter in a spot of light.

The woman was devastated by her loss and was harassed by the Police who thought she did something to her daughter. Her denials fell on deaf ears. And because the police didn’t believe her story, they took away the woman’s four year old son. He was placed in a foster home until the truth of the matter was decided.

When the foster family adopted the boy a year later, they also had an unusual experience. On the evening of his fifth birthday, he asked to go outside on the lawn of his house. Since it was his birthday, the adopted parents decided to allow it. But when they went outside with him, they were surprised and shocked to see him turn around and smile brightly to them. He held his arms up and laughed as he turned into a pillar of light as his sister had. He disappeared also.

Wes comforted the obviously drunken woman. She told him about the strange man she married and how he disappeared one day. He never came back after he gave her two children. But both were lost to her. She had always blamed herself for their disappearance.

But time went on and her child, a daughter, was a beautiful child. When this little girl reached the age of five, on her birthday night, she asked her mother if she could go outside. The woman refused to let her child go out. In the space of several days, the child became very ill and each day seemed to get worse. But no matter what happened, the woman refused to let her child go outside. At the end of a week, the child was near death but was still pleading to go outside. Again, the mother refused.

The next evening, the woman had a surprise guest. Her original husband knocked on her door and invited himself in. Because the woman still loved him a little, she allowed him to see her daughter. Although the child was very sick, the man gently picked her up and took her outside into the night. As soon as he and the child were outside, they held their hands to the sky and both turned into a bright light and disappeared, never to be seen again.